Record Store Day is tomorrow which means that your local record shop will be packed with all sorts of exclusive, limited edition goodies as well as major label cash-ins. There are hundreds of releases but many aren't available before the day itself so below are the ones that theartsdesk on Vinyl got their hands on this year. Dive in.

theartsdesk on Vinyl's RSD Choice

Hot 8 Brass Band Working Together EP (Tru Thoughts)

Support bands rarely get a mention in live reviews but Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs Pigs’ opening act for their present jaunt around the UK, Cattle are no bog-standard fare, designed to make the headliners look good. Comprising two drummers, screaming electronics, bass and howled vocals, they brought an apocalyptic sound that had much of the audience pummelled into submission well before their set was finished.

Their music is a bit wizard-y. It’s certainly imbued with a pungent sense of mammoth weed. And the “bastard” is surely for the sheer, meaty rock’n’roll heft of the word (much as Motörhead used it to title an album). But don’t be fooled. Mammoth Weed Wizard Bastard are not a passing indie-punk turn with a novelty name in the vein of, say, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin or Natalie Portman’s Shaved Head. Their new album carries serious weight. It’s heavy as osmium.

Norway’s Hedvig Mollestad Trio reset the dial to what jazz fusion sought to do when it emerged, and do so in such a way that it’s initially unclear whether they are a jazz-influenced heavy metal outfit or jazzers plunging feet-first into metal.

“Hey you, motherfucker / What you looking at? / What a fucking loser / Acting like a twat.” Yes indeed. Venom, the originators of black metal, are back to celebrate 40 years of disregarding taste and decency at every opportunity with their confrontational mash-up of metal, biker rock and punk and they’ve not mellowed one iota.

It’s about to begin. The final performance on the final night – and only UK date – of the European Apocalypse package tour featuring four extreme metal bands. The 1,700 capacity Roundhouse is sold out. Touts outside are scrabbling for tickets. A curtain covers the stagefront. A procession of images flicker across it; ancient art, demons, gods and hellish conflict. Then the screen goes black. In large white gothic letters, words in sequence: LONDON. PREPARE. TO. GET.

There’ve been more than a few cold and wet days in Birmingham just recently, as winter has been making its presence properly felt.

Disc of the Day reviews new albums, week in, week out, all year. Below are the albums to which our writers awarded five stars. Click on any one of them to find out why.

Baxter Dury, Etienne de Crécy and Delilah Holliday - B.E.D. ★★★★★ A small but perfectly sleazy work of sweary, cynical brilliance

There’s been a lot of conjecture over the last couple of years about HD Vinyl. It is, we’re told, a more precise and rounded analogue experience, taking record-listening to the next level. The company’s Austrian MD Guenter Loibl has explained that the process uses “a laser-cut ceramic instead of electroplated metal stampers” to achieve results that add 30% more audio information to a record. Sounds great. Bring it on. Just don’t go all CD on us and charge the earth.

I come to this band from the perspective of one who’s only seen the words "YOU ME AT SIX" on endless T-shirts passing in the street. I’m no connoisseur, then. From the cultural detritus that’s wended my way during their 10-year career, they just seemed a band who had no “thing”, no breakout song, no look, no cultural space or loudly impressed belief. Just five normal-looking guys who tour a lot, hard-working meat’n’potatoes rockers (who’d bridle at that cliché).